The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
How I See It
Sharp and subtitle-free – the English remake of ‘Call My Agent!’ is a cut above
Iwas once at a wrap party for a TV series I’d worked on when I spotted someone loitering by the catering table. They glanced furtively left and right, then picked up a platter of mini pizzas and tipped the whole thing into a brown leather satchel.
It was my agent.
“What are you doing?” I hissed, sneaking up on the starboard side.
“Handy for later!” came the reply. “I love mini pizzas.”
“But what would people think,” I muttered. “If they saw you?”
“I’m not ashamed!” protested my agent. “Everyone loves mini pizzas.”
“Never mind you!” I squawked. “What about my image? I can’t have people saying my agent needs to steal food to keep the wolf from the door! I am a major C-list celebrity, with realistic hopes of B. Has Dr Alice Roberts’s agent been seen stuffing bar snacks into a holdall? Has Susie Dent’s? No they bloody haven’t!”
You’ll notice I’ve been vague about the agent’s gender. That’s not because they had a groundbreaking gender-fluid identity; I think they were pretty traditional on that front. I’m just trying to be discreet about who they were, which, frankly, shows a lot more consideration for their reputation than they showed for mine. But I’ve had seven or eight agents in my time so you can’t pin this on anyone in particular. And lest I’ve accidentally revealed the precise phase of my career with the names I mentioned above: it may not have been Alice Roberts and Susie Dent that I cited. It could have been Ulrika Jonsson and Anthea Turner. (Or Annette Mills and Lady Isobel Barnett; I’ve been around a long time.)
I didn’t fire that agent for the ghastly pizza episode, by the way. I probably should have done. But I’m a procrastinator. I once took the best part of a year to break up with a boyfriend whose ex phoned me on Christmas Eve to describe the affair they’d been having since the previous July. It’s a miracle
I’ve managed to rack up so many former agents, given what I’m prepared to overlook.
At the moment, I don’t use an agent for television at all. My last representative – or rather, my last representative’s line manager – got so angry with me when I left that I was frightened to look at another agent for about five years. When I finally considered signing up with a new one – a brilliant woman whom I like enormously – she said: “I love people who are hungry for success.” And I realised I am not one of those people. I’d only disappoint her. So I haven’t got one.
I have got an assistant, who does some of the agenty things for me, but the problem there is that she’s nicer than I am. That’s the wrong way round. I’ll say: “Ring those people and tell them I’m EXTREMELY IMPORTANT and need to have a very special car sent, filled with snacks.” And she’ll say: “Done. But they were so friendly, and I knew that secretly you were grateful to be offered anything, so we agreed you’d be happy to hitch-hike in and bring doughnuts with you for the team.”
I’ve still got a book agent. But he’s more famous than I am, and has certainly sold more books. Seriously. He is a top flight literary agent who once wrote his own book just for the hell of it, and immediately sold more copies than anything I’ve published in a 25year career. I find it quite hard to get him on the phone. He probably needs an agent I could approach him through.
I was thinking about all this while watching Ten Percent on Amazon Prime. This is the UK remake of Call My Agent!, which, confusingly, is the English title under which the hit French show
Dix Pour Cent has been marketed in this country. (But if you’re hoping to get an agent, whether in France or the UK, let me tell you that they’ll take 10 per cent the day hell freezes over. Even then, you’ll probably spot them sweeping 15 per cent of the ice into a rucksack and telling you it’s standard.)
I only watched one episode of Call My Agent! because I avoid things with subtitles. All that staring at the bottom of the screen. Regular readers will know that I insist on eating while watching
TV, and I don’t like having to choose between missing a key plot twist or forking a mushroom into my eye. So I’m delighted by an English version in principle, and doubly delighted in practice. It’s just great. It zips along, nicely shot and beautifully paced, with some phenomenal performances that I hope will win a lot of awards.
Jim Broadbent is as terrific as always in episode one; Maggie Steed is irresistible throughout; big guest stars like Dominic
West and Helena Bonham Carter are hilarious – appearing as themselves with a likable absence of vanity – and a young chap called Harry Trevaldwyn (who was completely new to me) shines impressively brightly among them. But the best, for me, is
Tim McInnerny as a washed-up actor, giving a performance that manages to be simultaneously enormous yet utterly believable. He plays one of those actors who are hammier in real life than on stage and he pitches it perfectly, making himself ridiculous and heartbreaking at once.
I love this show. I wish I was in it. I should get a better agent.
Let me tell you, agents will only take ten per cent the day hell freezes over